Psalm 106 explained: Failing Again, Rescued Again

Thanks and a personal request (vv. 1-5)

The psalm thanks the LORD for a love that lasts, admitting no one could ever list all he has done. Then the singer asks to be included when God does good for his people again.

Confession at the sea (vv. 6-12)

The speakers admit they have done wrong just as their ancestors did, who panicked at the Red Sea and wished they were back in Egypt. God rescued them anyway and the pursuing army drowned, which the psalm says he did to show his own power, not because they deserved it.

Cravings, envy and a calf (vv. 13-23)

In the desert the people demanded meat and got it along with a deadly sickness, and the rebels Dathan and Abiram died when the ground opened. At Mount Sinai (here called Horeb) they worshiped a metal bull, and only Moses, pictured as a soldier standing in a gap in a broken wall, kept God from destroying them.

Refusing the promised land (vv. 24-33)

The people refused to enter the promised land, so that generation died in the desert, and later they worshiped Baal, a local god, at Peor. A plague stopped only when the priest Phinehas killed an Israelite man and the foreign woman with him, and at Meribah their complaints pushed Moses into rash words that cost him his own entry into the land.

Settling in, falling away (vv. 34-46)

In the land they did not destroy its peoples as the psalm says God commanded, and instead took up their gods, even sacrificing their own children. The psalm then sums up a repeating cycle: God handed them to enemies, they cried out, and he kept his covenant, his binding promise, and showed mercy.

A closing cry for rescue (vv. 47-48)

The plea to be gathered from the nations suggests the psalm was sung while many Israelites lived scattered abroad, likely during or after the exile to Babylon, though the date is uncertain. The final blessing also closes the fourth of the five books the Psalms are grouped into.

Key verse: Psalm 106:45

Something to think about

When you look back over a long history, whether of a family, a nation or your own life, what patterns seem to keep repeating, and has anything ever truly broken one?